Consultative Dialogue: Southern African Civil Society Engagement in Regional Policy Dialogue
Johannesburg, 23 May 2006
Introduction
The Southern Africa Trust held its first consultative dialogue with partners and potential partners to begin the process of setting an agenda for civil society engagement in regional policy processes in May 2006. At this meeting some ideas for a proposed agenda were presented and discussed. It was agreed that the Trust would build on the inputs made and develop a draft regional vision for overcoming poverty and an agenda for action to be circulated for further dialogues over the next year. This document captures some of the initial ideas as a contribution to the proposed process.
Background to Southern Africa Trust
In Southern Africa, linked to achieving the MDGs, most governments are engaged in the development and implementation of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). Policies to promote growth, democratic governance, and social and economic justice are part of these strategies. To be effective, however, many of these processes require more integrated regional approaches and stronger engagement by civil society and the private sector, at both national and regional levels.
With this challenge comes opportunities for new partnerships and alliances, and new forms of advocacy for better public policy. Effective policies that have strong popular support are a political outcome of negotiation and bargaining amongst many different interests and constituencies in society. These processes are crucial to building democratic participation and to creating accountable, responsive governance. However, if the voices of the poor are not asserted in these processes, other interests are likely to dominate in both the design and implementation of policies.
The Southern Africa Trust was therefore established in 2005 to support civil society organisations in southern Africa to participate effectively and with credibility in policy dialogue so that the voices of the poor can have a better impact in the development of public policies.
The Southern Africa Trust’s vision is that policies and strategies across the region work to end poverty. The mission of the Southern Africa Trust is to:
- Support organisations and processes: Provide technical and financial resources to creative organisations and processes that amplify the voices of the poor and excluded in regional policy dialogue;
- Strengthen regional impact: Promote a southern African regional identity, regional linkages between civil society organisations, regional policy dialogue, and a regional agenda to overcome poverty and inequality;
- Deepen engagement: Stimulate action-research, knowledge sharing, and evidence-based policy proposals to overcome poverty and inequality;
- Widen engagement: Facilitate dialogue amongst different interest groups and facilitate regional linking and learning about strategies for effective engagement in policy dialogue; and
- Impact on poverty: Profile innovative practices and processes to promote learning about how to maximise the impact of the voices of the poor in policy dialogue, and create opportunities for inclusive policy dialogue to overcome poverty.
The Southern Africa Trust achieves its mission through:
- Capacity building: Improving the capacity of regional civil society organizations to play a more effective role in influencing policies to overcome poverty.
- Policy Dialogue: Facilitating increased regional policy dialogue amongst civil society organizations, states, and the private sector, focused on overcoming poverty
- Evidence-Based Advocacy: Influencing aspects to the regional policy agenda in favour of evidence-backed policy objectives identified by poor and marginalized communities
- Creating an enabling environment: Promoting innovative practices and processes to build an enabling regional environment for engagement between civil society organizations, states, and the private sector
- Grant-making: Providing grants to civil society organizations representing the interests of the poor in regionally significant policy development processes.
The core values that guide its work are:
- Simplicity
- Transparency
- Integrity & Accountability
- Cooperation & Respect
- Approachability
- Equity & Progress
- Diversity & Inclusiveness
- Innovation & Learning
- Reliability & Effectiveness
The Southern Africa Trust works with diverse civil society organisations and alliances from southern Africa and beyond that promote public policy dialogue with a focus on poverty, especially those with a regional presence and impact. The Southern Africa Trust recognises that many civil society organisations require support to develop their ability to participate meaningfully in policy dialogue and provides resources to ensure this happens. For the Southern Africa Trust, civil society is understood broadly to include research institutes, NGO networks, faith-based organisations, the media, trade unions, popular organizations, private businesses, youth organisations and many other forms of interest-based organisation in society.
Scope for Civil Society Engagement
Inputs from Abie Ditlhake from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Council of NGOs and Chris Landsberg from the Centre for Policy Studies provided an overview of the issues and scope for civil society engagement. In summary the key issues are:
- The MDG, Nepad and the various country poverty reduction strategy papers and programmes of action provide the macro policy context in which civil society organizations work.
- It is critical that civil society organizations engage in regional policy processes be it through SADC Council of NGOs or through direct contacts and access to policy processes. SADC has traditionally been very state dominated and has made less space than some of its weaker counterparts in the Horn of Africa and West Africa for CSOs to engage.
- Historically civil society organizations have adopted an oppositional stance rather than engaging policy makers around issues. This needs to change.
- The “end poverty” lobby needs to elevate the intensity and breadth of CSO – state debates building on the lessons of those in the security, governance and human rights sectors all of which are more recognized terrains of state-CSO dialogue.
- The current dialogue is characterized by ideological differences rather than identification of areas of mutual interest and benefit. A focus on the developmental state and the implications of this for policy processes and service delivery might be one way to focus on the common ground and develop a new dialogue.
- The success of the engagement depends on understanding the current policy architecture and its strengths and weaknesses. A full database of the current policies is needed along with an ability to analyze the various positions.
- Another critical success factor is the extent of collaboration and unity amongst civil society organizations. Currently the sector is fragmented and competitive making it easy for states to dominate policy processes.
- In addition to improving collaboration between organizations there is also a need to broaden the platform of engagement and find ways to facilitate more active participation of grassroots communities living in poverty. In particular spaces for women, youth and people with disabilities need to be created to ensure the full spectrum of issues and interests are addressed.
- Improved information sharing between organizations is one of the essential components to effective policy advocacy. CSOs need to create platforms for real sharing and the prevention of duplication and use the shared information to increase the sector’s muscle.
- Information sharing should not be limited to an exchange between the existing organizations but should be extended to include learning lessons from other regional and global institutions, for example the Southern African Trade Union Council.
- There is a need to develop new models for engaging governments that take into account the various types of leadership in African countries.
Emerging Lessons From the Region
The next session focused on the emerging lessons from regional policy processes to reduce and end poverty. Ben Roberts of the Human Sciences Research Council extracted the lessons from the PRSP processes and Barbara Kalima-Phiri from the Southern African Regional Poverty Network extracted lessons from their work. In summary the key lessons are:
- Poverty is still on the increase despite all efforts of PRSPs and MDGs – need to revisit the whole development model
- Current framework of PRSPs still embodied in a macroeconomic framework similar to Structural Adjustment Programme (SAPs) , which has been heavily criticized for failing to deal with poverty reduction – PRSPs are now like “old wine in a new bottle”
- The new focus on poverty forced through the MDGs and PRSP has placed greater emphasis on poverty reduction and national development plans
- There are new opportunities for policy dialogue between different stakeholders but most of them have to be institutionalized
- In general the participation has not been sustained during implementation and new mechanisms are needed to ensure this happens
- Sharing of information is an important tool in the advocacy process
- Most CSOs are a lot less resourced than governments and the relationship is very uneven
- Analytical capacity in both CSOs and the state is weak and needs to be strengthened
- There is a need for more evidence based research
- Networks help strengthen the work and need to be fostered at every level
- There is lots of politics around who has the mandate to speak on behalf of civil society organizations. Regardless of the mandates secured there is a need to broaden participation
- There is a lack of national ownership of poverty reduction policy processes
- There is a lack of alignment between policy content and implementation
- The importance of building evidence based research around alternative strategies
In addition to extracting the lessons the two speakers also highlighted some country specific gaps in the existing policies namely:
- Migration
- Gender
- Youth
- Rural Productive Sectors
They noted that these issues were important and needed CSOs and others to push or lobby for their inclusion in second generation PRSPs.
In conclusion, the second generation Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers need to take cognizance of the lessons learnt from the first generation PRSPs and promote and preserve space for continuous policy dialogue with CSOs, particularly through the development of genuine and transparent mechanisms for participation.
There is also need to encourage innovative ways of domestic resource mobilization such as use of airport levy, remittances from people living in the Diaspora and have overseas development assistance (ODA) as a supplement. This will not only ease pressure on countries to borrow domestically but also allow them to dictate the policy direction for their countries as opposed to having more ODA which comes with stringent policy conditionalities.
The current trend of re-aligning the objectives of the second generation PRSPs with the national development plans of a country are an important step in ensuring that the aspirations of the poor are considered, and should be encouraged.
There is need for organizations working at the regional policy level to devote more energy around the development of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms/indicators, which they can hold their governments accountable for as they implement the second generation PRSPs.
Proposed Agenda
The dialogue delegates then broke up into three commissions focusing on trade and investment, food security and natural resource management, and regionalism and the MDGs. Within each commission delegates unpacked the issues with the help of opening inputs from specialists.
The trade and investment commission was introduced by Paul Runge who spoke about the many opportunities in the region, the enormous resource base and the hunger for those resources from China, for example. Despite the opportunities, few of these are leading to the development of the private sector in the region. This needs to change as it is the private sector that generates jobs and wealth, and the region needs a strong and vibrant private sector. Mzukisis Qobo of Mthente Research and Consulting Services focused on trade and investment policy. The objectives of such policies are growth, job creation and poverty eradication. Despite their importance civil society engagement is weak and needs to be strengthened. Finally Brendan Vickers of the Institute for Global Dialogue highlighted the fact that free trade does not exist. The challenge is to build production capacity. Industrial strategies and regional integration processes are important tools in this process.
The food security and natural resource management commission was introduced by Fred Kalibwani of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network highlighting the silent hunger caused by increased dependency rations given the incidence of HIV/AIDS and the consequential increased vulnerability of the poor. Sifiso Ndwandwe from the Mineworkers Development Agency spoke about the impact of mining on communities both in respect of the impact on the natural environment and of the impact of job losses which had further increased vulnerability and poverty as remittances are no longer possible. Bobby Peek from Groundwork focused on oil and mining issues in Africa and the impact on people’s ability to sustain themselves and the need for new policy interventions that curtail the rights of businesses.
The final commission on regionalism and the MDGs was introduced by Christine Musisi from the UNDP Regional Service Centre who focused on the triple-threat to southern Africa of food insecurity, governance issues, and HIV/AIDS. She focused on the need to ensure a comprehensive treatment regime for HIV/AIDS, including the possibility of regional generic production of ARVs and the need for SADC countries to develop nationally-determined MDG targets based on national visions and development plans and to localise the MDGs at community level. The second speaker was Ezra Mbogori from MWENGO, who spoke about the debt-trade-aid nexus and governance processes for development planning. He emphasised the need to develop a coherent and integrated regional vision for overcoming poverty.
Using the opening inputs delegates identified the key issues for a regional CSO agenda for the Southern Africa Trust and its partners. The key agenda items that emerged in these discussions were:
Generic areas of CSO work requiring further support:
- Holistic approaches to policy development and poverty eradication
- Processes that build CSOs sense of regional identity
- Processes that build the analytical capacity of partner organizations and organs of civil society
- Evidence based research
- Coalition and partnership building
- Mechanisms to broaden the base of participation of grassroots organizations
- Dialogue methodologies, lessons and best practices
- Alternative strategies for ending poverty and lessons from the these pilots and approaches
- Development of a vision for regional integration
Issues needing further attention:
- Trade and investment including a review of investment policies against criteria such as fairness, equity and sustainability and monitoring of regional trade agreements
- Research into growth trends and patterns
- Informal trading and expanding markets for informal traders
- Governance issues
- Land and food security
- ICT for development
- Women, youth and people living with disabilities
- Infrastructure development
- Appropriate social protection programmes - design and implementation
- Migration and movement of workers
- HIV/AIDS in particular the impact on key sectors and implications for future planning
- South Africa’s role in the SADC regionalization process
- The role of independent and community media
Key initiatives that the Southern Africa Trust and its partners need to be aware of and link with:
- Knowledge management for Africa
- The African Monitor initiative
- African strategy for sustainable education
- Second generation PRSP processes
- African Peer Reviews
Way Forward
- Southern Africa Trust will use the inputs as reflected in this summary to develop an initial vision for regional integration and an agenda for action
- Focused dialogues on the vision and relevant issues will be hosted.
- Where possible these will be coordinated with existing strategic processes
- Wherever possible the Southern Africa Trust will try to expand the pool of champions and allies working to end poverty
- The dialogue process will be expanded using partners to engage their own partners so as to reduce the focus on Southern Africa Trust
- Innovative approaches to extending the dialogue to communities living in poverty will be explored and pursued
- Wherever possible the focus will be on cross-border dialogues
- Southern Africa Trust will use its position to leverage resources to support and engage a range of different kinds of stakeholders in the dialogue process
- The dialogue process will be supported by an information sharing and dissemination programme and a capacity building programme to foster inclusion
- Baseline data on existing policy documents will be compiled to identify where there is a need for policy processes and where the focus should rather be on implementation
- The process will be supported by a focused action-oriented research programme commissioned by Southern Africa Trust and its partners
- Key indicators will be developed and agreed and used to monitor the performance of the Trust and its partners periodically.
Proposed Programme of Action
- This document will be circulated for comments
- Southern Africa Trust will set up a task team to convene a series of dialogues/ think-tanks to develop the draft vision for regional integration
- The draft vision will be circulated to all partners for inputs and comments
- A series of issue based dialogues will be convened to strengthen and deepen the vision and begin to map out a programme of action
- Based on the inputs at these dialogues a series of working papers on each of the issues will be developed
- The process will culminate in a sector consultative dialogue of stakeholders to adopt the vision and agree on a follow-up programme of action in partnership with key regional networks and other interest groups.
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